🔼The name Ben: Summary
- Meaning
- Son
- Etymology
- From the noun בן (ben), son.
🔼The name Ben in the Bible
The name Ben is vastly popular in our culture but in the Bible it occurs only once, and that in a high name-density chapter of Chronicles. The sole Biblical Ben is an obscure second degree Levite who is a gatekeeper but who is drafted to make music during the transportation of the Ark (1 Chronicles 15:18).
🔼Etymology of the name Ben
Ben is surely also the shortest name in the Bible (together with Dan and Ner), and although a fine name in its own right, the word ben appears as part of about a dozen compound names (see below).
The name Ben is identical to the common Hebrew noun בן (ben), meaning son:
בן
The noun בן (ben) means son, or more general: a member of one particular social or economic node — called a "house", which is built upon the instructions of one אב ('ab), or "father" — within in a larger economy (hence: the "sons of the prophet" are the members of the prophet-class; the prophets). This noun obviously resembles the verb בנה (bana), to build, and the noun אבן ('eben), stone.
Our noun's feminine version, namely בת (bat), means daughter, which resembles the noun בית (bayit), meaning house. Sometimes our noun is contracted into a single letter ב, whose name beth comes from בית (bayit) and means "house" as well. As a prefix, the letter ב (be) means "in." The word for mother, אם ('em), is highly similar to that of tribe or people, אמה ('umma).
🔼Ben meaning
The name Ben means Son. But it also means Building Block.